Can you guess who this (future) grandmaster is?

10/11/2007 – Here's another teaser from our early-pictures scrapbook: who is the child in this photo? He was a bit of a boy prodigy, who was often seen playing in the New York City area. Today he is a strong grandmaster, living in Europe, where he is the top player in his country. He has an incredibly insightful style of annotating games. We provide you with a few more or less helpful clues.

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Who
is this grandmaster?

Can you guess who the cute young child in the photo is? Once again we provide
you with some clues:

He was born in a country which is not that of his parents, i.e. he was
"born abroad".

He started playing chess at an early age and showed great talent for the
game, gaining the FM, IM and GM titles earlier than most of his compatriots.

In his early career he was often to be seen in the New York City area,
where he was friends with Pal Benko and Susan Polgar.

Today he lives in Europe, but does not spent much time in his native country,
although he is part of its chess federation and represents it.

He remains a strong GM, rated around 2600, the strongest player in his
native country.

In the last weeks or months he played successfully in an international
tournament, proving that age does not matter in chess.

To our delight he sends us deeply annotated games that provide valuable
insight into the thought processes of a player of his calibre.

Sampler

To give you an impression of his style of annotation here is a snippet from
a game we recently received. The full version of this and a second beautifully
annotated game will be published here in a few days. In the following position
our grandmaster, who had white, had just played the exchange 14...Nb4xBd3 15.Pc2xNd3.
He writes:

In my preparation before the game I assessed this position as favourable
for White due to Black's insecure king and White's rapid development. I can
only wonder what I was thinking. After Black's next move it is clear he will
have few problems with his king, while White will sorely miss his light-squared
bishop. 15...b6! Now I suddenly realised that only Black could have
an advantage here. I will have very serious problems with my d3-pawn after
...Ba6 and ...Qg6. For whatever reason I had only considered 15...c5?,
which is clearly bad due to 16.b4! b6 (16...cxb4 17.Nb3 b6 18.a3 with
initiative) 17.Nb3 Qg6 18.bxc5 Ba6 19.Rf3 bxc5 20.Bxf4+/-.

So can you guess who this grandmaster is? As you probably know by now we are
quite sneaky with the hints we provide. Naturally they are all true, but sometimes
a wee bit misleading. We will reveal the identity of our GM friend, together
with a biography and the two annotated games, this weekend.

See also

11/28/2018 – The moment we've all been waiting for! Live games (for Premium members) from the 2018 World Championship match in London. Every two games will be followed by a rest day until Game 12 (if necessary) on November 26th which will be preceded by an additional rest day. All rounds start at 15:00 UT (London time) / 16:00 CEST / 10:00 EST. If needed there would be a rapid tiebreak match on Wednesday, November 28th. | Photos: Patricia Claros

See also

8/27/2018 – Live games and commentary from Saint Louis! Fabiano Caruana, Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian tied for first place, while Caruana also tied for fourth place in the Grand Chess Tour standings with Wesley So, forcing a playoff match to be held on Tuesday. | Graphic: Saint Louis Chess Club

Video

Former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik liked to play the French and once described it as a 'difficult and dangerous opening'. But in this 60 minutes video IM Andrew Martin suggests an aggressive and little-used idea of the renowned attacking player GM Viktor Kupreichik to counter the French: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Be3!?. Andrew Martin uses the games of Kupreichik to show why this line could catch many French aficionados unprepared and is very dangerous for Black. Attacking players will love this line and the unusual complications that it promotes.

"Simple yet aggressive!" Enjoy this new exciting DVD by Simon Williams. Let the famouns Grandmaster from England show you how to gain a very exciting yet well founded opening game with the London System (1.d4 d5 2.Bf4).